.
.
.
by John Earl, July 16, 2014, cross-posted from the Surf City Voice
[Note: The characterization of the Executive Committee meetings as “secret” is the writer’s term and his term only.
The wording of the opening paragraph was not meant to imply otherwise.]
An Orange County Water District director, infuriated over being misled by OCWD staff and other directors about secretly held and possibly illegal executive committee meetings, plans to speak out at tonight’s board meeting, July 16, the Surf City Voice has learned.
“Since I have been copied with agendas for recent executive committee meetings,” Director Jan Flory told the Voice in a phone interview, “I am very disturbed that they are not copied to the rest of the board before its meeting. The scope of issues it talks about far exceeds what I have been told the Executive Committee deals with.”
The previously secret agendas and other documents were shown to Flory by the Voice, which obtained them through multiple requests under the California Public Records Act.
Flory is one of three appointed OCWD directors on the ten-member governing board. She represents the city of Fullerton and started her term last January. The other seven board members were elected by districts.
Flory said she will ask Fullerton’s city attorney to look into the legality of the Executive Committee’s meetings.
Secret Ex Com agenda revealed – click for larger image.
At the June 18 OCWD board meeting, Flory asked about the Executive Committee, following up on inquires made by the Voice and public comments made at previous board meetings.
“I’ve heard grumblings among some of the members of the public who feel excluded by the process,” she told the board. “They are suspicious of what goes on, and I guess I would like an explanation of what is the executive committee really all about,” she said.
Stumbling over his words, OCWD president Shawn Dewane claimed that the Executive Committee is an ad hoc committee and is, therefore, not required under California’s public meeting law, known as the Brown Act, to be open to the public.
“Is that correct, Mr [Joel] Kuperberg?” he asked of the District’s legal counsel.
“That’s correct,” Kuperberg answered. “It does not have a particular subject matter by which I understand it takes up issues that either the president or the general manager think are important to be taken up by the committee, as to water issues or property management, and it doesn’t have regular meetings scheduled. Because of those two factors, it is not required to be a publicly noticed meeting under the Brown Act.”
Dewane explained further that, “In my experience, the meetings are held at random and for no particular purpose other than the example of something that would be, of no particular purpose other than an item of emergency, let me put it that way.”
The “item of emergency,” he explained, would be a “piece of legislation introduced that is affecting the district or something like that.”
There have been relatively few executive meetings since he became board president in 2010, he said.
General Manager Mike Markus then told Flory that he was usually the one who asks for the “ad hoc” meetings. There have only been two executive committee meetings in 2014, he said.
“I haven’t discussed any – I’m just trying to think from the last one,” Markus feigned, as if trying to remember what would be a typical – and innocuously legal – executive committee topic.
He had been invited to be the keynote speaker at a conference in China, he explained, to be fully reimbursed by the party putting on the conference.
Not to be “bothering the entire board about it, I bounced it off the board president, vice president, past presidents, so I can kind of get some concurrence that I am headed in the right direction.”
Poseidon secrets revealed in secret OCWD meeting – click for larger image.
Director Stephen Sheldon, recently caught by the Voice for violating conflict of interest laws (see No Comment on Poseidon Vote), told Flory that the Executive Committee meetings are “no different than you or I getting together and talking about an issue. That would not be a violation of the Brown Act.”
But the previously hidden agendas, plus director expense reports examined by the Voice, and legal opinions on file with the State Attorney General’s office, either directly contradict virtually every explanatory claim about the Executive Committee made to Flory by Markus, Dewayne and Sheldon or render them irrelevant.
The records reveal that Dewane’s claim that the Executive Committee met for emergencies is impossible, because the criteria for emergency meetings under the Brown Act, which guarantees the public’s right to open public meetings, were not met–there were no urgent matters requiring action to curtail disruption of District facilities listed on a single executive committee agenda.
(Click for larger image.)
Also, the complete minutes of emergency meetings must be posted as a matter of public record, and no such records exists, according to OCWD staff responding to a public records inquiry by the Voice.
The Brown Act is complex and sometimes calls for nuanced interpretations, but its basic guiding principles, stated in section 54950, are fairly simple:
In enacting this chapter, the Legislature finds and declares that the public commissions, boards and councils and other public agencies in this State exist to aid in the conduct of the people’s business. It is the intent of the law that their actions be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly.
The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.
Section 54950 also provides the backdrop of a legal opinion published by the State Attorney General’s office in 1996, which applies to the way OCWD conducts its executive committee meetings.
(Click for larger image.)
The opinion found that the term “permanent”, used to define a committee of a legislative body–that falls under open meeting requirements of the ACT– “, may be commonly defined as ‘to endure, remain’”, and that the term “continuing” as in “‘continuing subject matter jurisdiction’” (referred to by OCWD legal counsel) means “needing no renewal”.
The opinion also found that “‘subject matter’ means ‘matter presented for consideration’” and that “‘jurisdiction’ means ‘power, right or authority to hear a cause,’” such as budget issues, contracts and personnel matters “and that its authority needs no renewal.”
Thus, “We thus follow function over form in carrying out the Legislature’s purpose,” the legal opinion says.
All else is irrelevant.
The committee, whatever it is called, must be open to the public if its responsibility is to give advice “on budgets, audits, contracts, and personnel matters upon the request of the legislative body,” e.g., the OCWD Board of Directors.
In other words, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck, even if it is called a goose.
And a good look at its agendas seems to show that the OCWD Executive Committee looks just like a duck and has its share of quacks.
Twenty-two agendas were acquired by the Voice, but there are at least five more meetings that were held for which agendas weren’t provided, the directors’ expense reports show.
Ten of the agendas disclosed to the Voice cover the period from Jan. 2013 to the July 14, 2014.
Some agendas are simple listings of topics to be covered, others contain brief or in-depth background information provided by General Manager Markus.
The names of the attending directors, who were appointed by OCWD board president Shawn Dewane, are never mentioned on the agendas, but expense records indicate that for 2013 the members of the Executive Committee were Shawn Dewane, Roger Yoh, Philip Anthony, and Cathy Green.
The agenda issues cover a wide range of topics that the full board could be expected to deliberate on, such as:
- board meeting guidelines,
- workshops,
- personnel issues,
- media protocol,
- annexation agreements,
- labor relations,
- legal strategies for lawsuits,
- a gym for employees,
- water assessment and replenishment fees,
- car allowances,
- proposals to cost share and merge with MWDOC,
- widespread overpayment of directors’ stipends,
- the GM’s proposal to increase his salary,
- the Bay Delta Conservation Plan,
- the District’s proposal to build a power plant in Anaheim,
- purchasing land in Anaheim,
- talking points on energy usage for ocean desalination,
- the proposed Poseidon Resources desalination plant,
- and more.
Some of the more interesting issues discussed include:
- From the July 1, 2013 meeting, item #4, “Talking Points on Energy Usage for Seawater Desalination: I [General Manager Mike Markus] have been asked by a Director (sic) to bring forward an issue to the next Leg/Com meeting (07-11-13) regarding a change in messaging when we talk about the benefits of GWRS Staff has been using the talking point that a benefit of GWRS is that it ‘uses half the energy it takes to bring imported water from Northern California and a third of the energy to desalinate seawater.’ The request had been made to just refer to the energy savings benefit for imported water and drop the reference to seawater desalination.
- From the Aug. 15, 2013 meeting, item #1, Citizens Advisory Committee: “I have attached a spreadsheet which shows the 12 applications we have received for the Citizens Advisory Committee [on the Poseidon desalination project] The deadline for applications is August 30th and I would like the Committee to consider establishing a process for the selection of Committee members along with a timeline so that we can answer any questions that may arise from outside stakeholders about the selection process.”
- Also from the Aug. 15, 2013 meeting, item #2, Poseidon Support Letter: “Poseidon has been approaching different water agencies about writing letters of support to the Coastal Commission for the Huntington Beach project. I told Scott Maloni that I could not write any letter until I ran the idea past the Executive Committee. I would like to discuss how the Committee would like to approach this issue.”
- Again, from the Aug. 15, 2013 meeting, item #8, General Manager Pay Adjustment: “I am requesting a 2% salary increase for cost-of-living (same as all other employees) retroactive to July 1, 2013 and a contribution to my 457 retirement account of $23,000, which would serve a non-base building merit increase. I have attached a spreadsheet which shows the General Manager compensation for 9 other water/sanitation agencies. The average total compensation under the “current” table is $255,877, which puts my existing total compensation 5.4% below the average. The average total compensation under the “proposed” table is $257,402, which would put my proposed total compensation right at the average.”
- From the Nov. 12, 2013 meeting, item #1, Poseidon Project: “I have attached the current white paper that staff has prepared evaluating the proposal we have received from Poseidon for the purchase of water from the proposed Huntington Beach Desalination facility. Please consider the information confidential at this point in time as it contains data that is protected in the confidentiality agreement we have with Poseidon. Before we release the paper to others, we want to make sure we have Poseidon’s concurrence that the information can be made public.”
- Also from the Nov. 12, 2013 meeting, item #4, Director Expense Reports: “Recently there have been public records requests for Director Bilodeau’s expense reports. A detailed evaluation of his records has shown that there have been staff errors, which led to discrepancies between claimed meetings and meeting minutes. These discrepancies led to internal investigations for other Directors and we have uncovered widespread errors with most directors being affected. I will provide a handout at the meeting detailing the mistakes and a report as to how new procedures have been developed that will keep this from happening in the future.”
That report, which the Voice has sought in a new information request, may help explain the discrepancy between directors’ expense records, which indicate 13 Executive Committee meetings for 2013 and the number of meeting agendas – seven – obtained by the Voice for the same period.
Coming to Light
The agendas were discovered circuitously by the Voice after several information requests made under the California Public Records Act.
Desalination talking points – click for larger image.
The secret executive committee meetings were first mentioned in an article published by the OC Weekly online on September 24, 2013, that asked why Director Bilodeau was still billing ratepayers for “No-Show Meetings.”
Based on directors’ expense reports, the article said that Bilodeau and three other directors at the time, including Sheldon, Wes Bannister, and Philip Anthony attended 14 secret executive committee meetings at Sheldon’s Newport Beach office.
The article noted that the OCWD board policy manual indicated that the Executive Committee is a “standing committee,” which means that it must be held in public and properly noticed with agendas and minutes provided to the public.
But an OCWD spokesperson told the Weekly that the executive committee was an “ad hoc committee,” so the Brown Act didn’t apply, no matter what the manual said.
The spokesperson also told the Weekly that “the manual does not include a definition of standing.”
The Weekly reporter was led to believe that there were no agendas or minutes serving as records of the supposedly ad hoc executive committee meetings.
In April of this year, the Voice followed up by requesting a copy of the 2013 OCWD Board of Directors Policy and Procedure Manual.
The manual is a detailed explanation of board policies based on the OCWD Administrative Act, which is required by state law and cited throughout.
Strangely, I found that the manual listed the Executive Committee as an ad hoc, not standing, committee.
To find out why, this reporter contacted OCWD secretary Janice Durant last April by phone.
According to Durant, the 2013 manual – which was written that year, she said – had erred in depicting the Executive Committee as a standing committee, so a correction was made.
She added that the manual is revised every year and that it was never meant to be a board-authorized manual, and that it was started when she came to the District 23 years ago.
The other 2013 version board manual cited by the Weekly, and also obtained by the Voice, clearly calls the Executive Committee a standing committee and says its mission is to “evaluate and propose new District policies and initiatives as appropriate” and that it meets “as needed.”
That description describes the function of the OCWD Executive Committee presented in the now-revealed meeting agendas.
Flory is skeptical about the “error” cited by Durant.
“All of a sudden it’s an ad hoc committee? When did that happen?” she asks.
Durant said that there is no record of when the board created the Executive Committee and the only way that she knew the 2013 manual was in error was by the legal definition of the difference between a standing and ad hoc committee–a definition that it now seems many OCWD officials don’t understand.
Subsequent to my conversation with Durant, this reporter–wondering how such an invasive error could have remained standing for 23 years, or at least since 2010, asked for copies of the board manual for each year in that period.
But, in a written response, Durant said that I had already been presented with those copies – by which she meant the two versions of the 2013 manual (in electronic form), but she didn’t say which one was in use from 2010 to 2013.
Durant had also told this reporter that there were no documents recording how many executive meetings were held or when they were held except for the directors’ expense reports.
Flory finds that assertion, along with other false or misleading accounts of the secretly held Executive Committee, told to her by staff and some of her board colleagues, “absolutely infuriating.”
The meeting will be held tonight at 5:30 p.m. at the Orange County Water District, located at 18700 Ward St., in Fountain Valley. Enter the parking lot off of Ward. Flory will also try to discuss her proposal to video stream and archive board and committee meetings, which President Dewane and some other board members tried to table for one year at a recent committee meeting, as part of her, so far, one-person-effort to create greater transparency and increase public access to OCWD meetings.
– See more at: http://www.surfcityvoice.org/2014/07/absolutely-infuriating-ocwd-director-says-about-secret-meetings/
Okay, let’s get this straight: an “ad hoc” committee is established to perform a specific task. It doesn’t just show up every now and then to jabber away. It has a narrowly defined scope and when it is done it should be disbanded; and just being ad hoc obviously doesn’t mean exemption from the Brown Act.
What is described is indeed a standing committee.
This agency needs to be swept clean.
Agreed.
Anyone still needing a reason to justify consolidating or eliminating special districts, this would be it.
I am a fan of special districts so I disagree with Mr. Cantor about eliminating them. Just look at how the city of fullerton has handled their water department (terribly)for an example of how a special district could have helped there with accountability and focus.
While I find this article to be rambling and can easily see it is a hit piece on anyone who supports desalination it does bring up some “possible” areas of improvement. I am sure that honest oversight by this blogger is appreciated and that any real issues he discovers will help ocwd evolve in the way it operates as a board. what I don’t see here is any major scandal or reason to dissolve special districts. I know ocwd is tackling state and national policies to keep us supplied with water and that dewane spends countless hours on our behalf and that since he arrived there ocwd has been greatly transformed for the better and the amount of scholarship among board members has also expanded exponentially. if the executive meetings need to be classified differently, so be it. but this is an awfully long article (which it has to be since it reaches back a year and a half) over two meetings in 2014. Hopefully they get it cleared up. I know Mr. Earl has a standard “cry wolf” mantra of secret , illegal meetings and brown act violations. due to the fact that all of his accusations throughout the years have failed to stick , it will be interesting to see if he finally gets something right.
To be clear(er), there are many good and valid special districts. OCWD isn’t one of them.
There’s no reason for its existence and the problems it addresses can be solved by a superior entity with broader resources and authority.
If a special district wants to be a part of a democratic institution, it should act like a democratic institution. Over paying a part time legislative body that has to meet in secret to execute its mission isn’t acting like a democratic institution. Not even close.
Ever consider the OC Vector Control Board? It has 35 boardmembers and less than 100 employees, I believe.
So, how many directors does it take to kill a fruit fly?
Thirty five.
…
That’s not funny.
The truth rarely is . . .
The joke here used to be that because the employees had a lower pension formula than County workers it made no sense to consolidate.
But now after PEPRA everybody’s pretty much going to be in the same boat anyhow. Have we heard any more talk about consolidation with the County Health Care Agency?
Crickets. Maybe Moorlach will finally get off his…
Aw, forget it.
I’m in danger of shorting out my keyboard from salivating over this huge track record of wrongdoing.
But it is the salivation of a man who has found his calling. You do have Jan’s number, don’t you? Do you want John’s?
The OCWD is typical of OC politics that really is devoid of any ethical underpinning. And politics takes government right down with it.
At the County I grew really sick and tired of really highly paid “professionals” who were no more than facilitators for any hare-brained vanity projects or outright scams proposed by the supervisors (think Saddleback Vineyard purchase, Victim’s Memorial, soccer fields at Haster Basin, getting your best friend a fake sole source real estate commission and trying to make it all look philanthropic).
The OCTA and OCWD staff are just flunkies, and yet flunkies with a plan: they go along with all the nonsense and their perks, privileges, pay, and peccadilloes are all covered up by the pols – who just happen to be getting freebies left and right too, and who are also submitting fraudulent expense accounts and time sheets.
I don’t know what it was like previously, but if i were betting I would say it has an awful lot to do with the way Michael Cappizi was run out in the late 90s by the Republican establishment because of his willingness to pursue political malefactors.
CATHY GREEN (with Roger Yoh and Katherine Barr) KILLS even LOOKING AT THE IDEA of LIVE-STREAMING WATER BOARD MEETINGS so that the public can watch them at home. I want THAT to be the headline, since Cathy (and Roger and Mrs Barr but mainly Cathy) was too chickenshit to vote NO, instead abstaining – and you’re NOT supposed to abstain from a vote unless you have some kind of conflict, but these people do whatever they want.
This turned out to mainly be about Jan Flory wanting to have the staff look into how much it would cost etc. to LIVE STREAM MEETINGS as so many councils do. Jan did not like John and me making it sound like she was calling these extra meetings “secret” – hence those two sentences we added up at top. She is not a bomb-thrower like some of us, just a moderate reformer, but we appreciate her very much.
Jan was joined in this modest proposal by four of her fellow directors – the two who like her are councilmembers, Sidhu and Sarmiento, as well as Philip Anthony, and, surprising us all, Stephen Sheldon, who must be wanting to look as clean as possible since his brush with “conflict of interest.”
Two of the members who MOST need to be watched, DeWane and Bilodeau, were absent (or maybe they just got there really late.) Jan had already mentioned her proposal at a subcommittee meeting or something, where it got shot down – or passed on to the general meeting with a recommendation to “table” it – because DeWane and others thought it was both unnecessary and prohibitively expensive (although they waste ten or a hundred times as much at the drop of a hat.)
Cathy Green defiantly, passive-aggressively, insisted on “abstaining” rather than voting “NO” because in her opinion the idea shouldn’t have even been BROUGHT UP at the board meeting after its chilly reception at the subcommittee meeting. And Barr and Yoh joined her in this disrespect, all three of them expressing great resentment at being treated as though they were untrustworthy. Barr in particular went on in that vein, complaining about how hard she had worked on the board for THIRTY-FIVE YEARS and didn’t deserve the public’s distrust. (Actually nobody ever said they didn’t trust HER, but she really seems to identify herself with the whole board.) She spoke of leaving the board FINALLY at the end of this year, and sounded like she was looking forward to it.
SO we had a quorum, and a majority of those there – 5 out of 8 – voted yes on having the staff look into the possibility of live streaming … but we still lost, because their rule is there has to be at least 6 to pass anything. The very modest proposal of live-streaming board and sub-committee meetings so the public can see and hear them at their convenience was WAY TOO MUCH DEMOCRACY for Dewane, Bilodeau, Green, Barr, and Roh. Sad face emoticon. Angry face emoticon.
I have little doubt that vote was orchestrated. They even let the oleaginous Sheldon get off a yes vote.
The State is littered with the sorrowful detritus of its Nineteenth Century agrarian history in the form of antiquated, obsolete and yet still extant local water and school districts.
Come to think of it, the counties themselves represent bureaucratic lines drawn to represent 1800s reality.
*This is so cool. You go Jan Flory…you go girl. Ya see Big Agencies work like this: Three Directors to start. They rip the system, get paid back door money and the public screams. They add two mor Directors……which takes about two weeks to corrupt, but they make cosmetic changes that look like they are doing something. Then come those Special Districts, with Special Problems….with Special Needs…..with more of the same. Pretty soon you have a 100 folks on the back door payroll and of course the annual budget has skyrocketed into the stratosphere! Government….what did they say: “Heck, sell it to the Government…they’ll buy anything!” We will simply join the Clean House Clan and cut the overhead for both the Special Interests and our annual Government Budget for that Agency!
amazing that no one here recognizes the great work of Dewane. It surely is noted county and statewide. his vision has helped augment the basin water with very inexpensive untreated Met water special purchases that is of benefit to all, millions of dollars worth of water that resulted in increased reliability. it would be nice to have some honest coverage of all the great things that are happening at OCWD instead of staying in the weeds worrying about a 200 dollar stipend for a meeting you deem “too short”. Countless other hours are spent during the week on phone calls to Sacramento, Washington DC, and even worldwide to help us through our water crisis. yet not a word about anything good happening. Incredible with all the great things going on. yet “steaming video” is a major issue? or just the next job of deflecting along with the usual charges of secret meetings, illegal closed session meetings, corruption, payoffs, brown act violations, etc.
Hey, write your own article, if you dare. I’d want to publish it. I’m sure that it would attract many interesting comments.
Try to make it sound less like vague PR pap than most the above comment, though.
As for the substance of your conclusion: government transparency (as an antidote to government corruption) is a huge issue. It is interesting that you disparage it, mysterious person who so far as I know does not serve on a water board.
I was thinking the same thing. Let’s hear of the good stuff Dewane does, I haven’t been impressed with him so far … but sometimes I’m wrong! How much credit DOES he deserve for the Groundwater Replenishment – a lot? Any? I’ll still fight him on Poseidon, I do know enough about that, AND on transparency which he seems to think his board doesn’t need – always a worry.
*Community Service……such an unrewarding experience….eh? Putting some much into the process and getting nothing in return except the comments of ingrates and jealous folks who wise they had that $200 bucks a meeting for seven different boards….each and every week. God, it must be tough duty, kissing that many rings, using so many tissues for so many noses …and whatever else is close. Yep, DWM….our hearts go out to you and your pals. Thank you for your personally unrewarding community service, but then somebody has to do it….eh?
after thinking over the winship’s comment I must say they are very out of touch with the work done by water districts. Water is the new oil and it is very political. without vigilance by the districts their ratepayers could be subjected to some very large increases in rates due to continuing legislative efforts at all levels that would be very negative for ratepayers. without the vision from active directors that offer rate neutral alternatives or fair distribution of water the Winships would really be reaching for their tissues. The stipends to directors are not much more than rounding errors in the district budgets. They obviously have a lot of pent up anger and seem to even know who my “pals” are! Yes, somebody has to do it and it didn’t turn out to be Anna or Ron on MWDOC did it? I mean, she did get 5000 votes. too bad the winner got close to 60 thousand. Or Ron for MWDOC. he got 4.5K votes, winner 45K votes. close. I see where the anger comes from.
*Having watched “China Town” about 15 times….we can say with impunity, we have the drift in regards to water. In 1976, we asked the Director of the OCWD if we should get bottled water….because we noticed floating toilet paper in our tap water. He responded: “Do you have any indoor plants that you want to live?” Hey, we volunteer every year to be on the Advisory Commissions of the OCWD and the OCTA. No one wants us…….that is a message in itself.
are you saying the water quality has improved immensely since then? of course whether it has or not, floating toilet paper in your tap water had nothing to do with OCWD. OCWD does not serve your house directly, your local water department does. but of course you know that, don’t you? I hope so. it is rather elementary.
Reminds me of Dardis fellow who posted trying to insinuate that Directors at OCWD get their water free while the rest of us pay for it. he apparently doesn’t know who delivers water to the Director’s houses either. it is this level of scholarship by the denigrators that makes the rest of their comments suspect.
*What do they say? Garbage in and garbage out? We won’t bother to argue the efficacy of the water system. At this time of year of course we call call celebrate Clorox water day. When you take your shower take a deep breath and smell that wonderful clean Liquid Bleach smell, which occurs when the wells get low during the summer. Of course, during water shortages…the wells are low all the time. The bottom 10 feet are loaded with perchlorates, MTBE or other goodies (you know – rocket fuel which now is endemic in Mother’s Milk.) Let’s get real, the barrier infusions holding back the seawater from coastal wells and aquifers are always a sometime thing!: Brackish water causes disease and other maladies…..but why even bother to think about reality. Your pals at the OCWD all flaunt their reverse osmosis chops….which is technology about 30 years old. But who is counting? The arguments against Desal are all nonsense. But again….who is counting? And you know that? Right?
“The arguments against Desal are all nonsense”
Bullshit. A Poseidon-esque deal is a fleece job regardless of desal technology. A Honda Fit is a bargain at 18K, and it’s a rip off at 60K with lease payments that never end. It’s not about the car, it’s about the deal. That’s math even you can figure out. Maybe.
Someone stupid- could have been cook or DWM, who cares – recently said desal is the logical next step. Also bullshit. The logical next step is conservation and de-incentivising consumption.
infusing the basin with fresh desal water, conservation and efficient water use along with storm water capture will raise the aquifer level and make your water taste much cleaner then! Additionally, OCWD is committed to stopping seawater intrusion, a very serious threat to the whole basin. we need water for that too. build desal plants, the momentum for desal is building rapidly, as fast as the bullet train enthusiasm is going down. we could build many desal plants for the cost of that boondoggle train
There is no momentum building to support the most expensive and energy intensive solution to providing water that man has ever known. Desalination is not, nor will it ever be, an appropriate solution for residential water use in the greater LA basin.
Ryan, desal is PART of the solution. Yes, there is huge momentum for desal, like it or not. not so much for a bullet train. see you at the grand opening of the HB desal plant? or , if not, at any of the others that will be built? they will be first class, people from around the world will come to see them and their cutting edge technology. The perforene membrane system will drastically reduce the energy needed for desal.
from Lockheed Martin:
“The Perforene membrane was developed by placing holes that are one nanometer or less in a graphene membrane. These holes are small enough to trap the ions while dramatically improving the flow-through of water molecules, reducing clogging and pressure on the membrane.
At only one atom thick, graphene is both strong and durable, making it more effective at sea water desalination at a fraction of the cost of industry-standard reverse osmosis systems. …”
It’s not a fraction of RO. It’s the pump, not the filter, that makes the tech expensive.
Desal is not part of the solution. It’s part of the problem.
well there you have it Ryan. the pump works less and energy use is reduced by huge percentages because of the filters. desal is part of a “problem”? in all seriousness I don’t have a clue as to what you mean by that. I could guess that more water = more people, crops, and business but that is the common argument from those against desal. What other problems is desal a part of?
Not a huge percentage. A very small percentage, actually. The wattage per gallon is still astronomical in comparison to other options. Always well be. That’s just the physics of removing salinity.
Every hour and every dollar that goes into pushing desal, a solution that is not appropriate as a water source for millions of people, takes away from improving other feasible solutions. That’s why it is part of the problem.
The direct capital costs are too high. The operating costs are too high. The opportunity costs are too high. It is simply inconceivable that the public would tolerate a massive public subsidy to support the most expensive option for water, especially when other solutions haven’t been exhausted.
Of course deadwhitemale likes Shawn Dewane. It should be obvious by now that anyone conected to Righeimer & the red headed step child can do no wrong in the vast wasteland that is deadwhitemale’s mind.
Shawn Dewane is is about as useless as that troll Jimmy Fisler has shown himself to be.
Don’t worry though Amburgy is about to announce he’s running. (Sacrasm alert)
Epperson?
hopefully Amburgey goes down in flames.
*As all can see….there are some vested interest people out there that are really afraid of Desal. Why might that be? If your argument is that the Posiden deal is a rip……how many other companies have you contacted to make competitive bids? Hey, you can always go to Qatar or Aruba and ask about their systems. You could simply Google the issue……but then you would find out the actual cost of production of a Desal Plant. You would find out how long the payback period would be and most importantly you find out how much every gallon of Desal water would cost the consumer. But hey, then all your name calling and misrepresentations wouldn’t mean much….would they? Reminds us a great deal of the movie “Water Hole #3!” A bunch of bad guys all trying to figure out how to poison the last well they visit. As the Godfather said: “We don’t care so much what people do for a living – but as far as $200 stipends for OCWD Water meetings are concerned….we are not going to support you…..